<\/p>
If you work a 9-to-5 job and often find yourself struggling to get out of bed in the morning, or starting to flag in the late afternoon, the person to blame is Henry Ford. The founder of the Ford Motor Company started the practice in the early 1920s to keep the production lines that filled his factories churning out vehicle after vehicle as efficiently as possible.<\/p>\n
It proved to be frighteningly effective and ushered in a new age of mass production that was copied the world over and is still referred to as Fordism today. But now, 100 years later, the 9-to-5 working week is looking more and more like it needs a serious rethink.<\/p>\n
The rise in homeworking during the COVID pandemic has led many to question the rigidity of the working week, with many saying that the introduction of flexible hours would create a happier, more productive workforce.<\/p>\n
This is especially true when you take into account our chronotypes \u2013 the term used to describe our natural inclination to be alert and energetic or sluggish and sleepy at a given time of day. On one end of the spectrum are owls, who naturally prefer to get up late and stay awake late, and on the other are larks, who naturally get up early and go to bed early.<\/p>\n
\u201cFactors that influence chronotype are mostly genetic. We know that we wake up and go to bed at a different times. And if we look at it biologically, then we know that people have different circadian rhythms, which means that hormones, for example, are released at different times, and the body temperature changes at different times,\u201d says Dr Anita Lenneis, a chronotype researcher based at the University of Warwick.<\/p>\n
Read more about sleep:<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the hormones that plays a major role in our sleep<\/a> and wake cycles is melatonin.<\/p>\n \u201cMelatonin is influenced by daylight, so when it gets dark, your melatonin level starts to rise and then you start to feel more tired. But it\u2019s not only dependent on light. Even if people are living in caves<\/a> or if you put them in laboratories for days, then their melatonin levels still follow a circadian rhythm,\u201d says Lenneis.<\/p>\n \u201cMelatonin is maybe the best marker of circadian pace \u2013 especially dim light melatonin onset, which is the time of day when melatonin gets released in the evening. But obviously, it\u2019s a bit intrusive sometimes and very costly to study all these biological markers.\u201d<\/p>\n Most studies use a much simpler method of determining a person\u2019s chronotype that can be followed by anyone, says Lenneis.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have questionnaires to find out what type you are. If you sleep on free day, you can make a calculation using the time you fall asleep, plus your sleep duration divided by two. So if you go to bed at midnight, you then sleep for eight hours, that would be four.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019ve got a low score it means you are a very early person. And if you\u2019ve got a high score, then you are a very late person. Chronotype is normally distributed, which means that only very few people are very early people, and only very few people are very late people.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the concept of chronotypes has been around for a long time, exactly why our sleeping habits differ so widely still remains something of a mystery.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is an evolutionary idea. I don\u2019t know how true it is, but there are some people who say that when people were living in caves they had to be vigilant so needed some people to be awake all the time,\u201d say Lenneis. \u201cIf you have some people sleeping when others are awake, then everyone is safe. You can\u2019t be eaten by a bear.\u201d<\/p>\n This would obviously have been all well and good for a tribe of hunter-gatherers who were able to sleep at different times of their choosing, but clearly it\u2019s not so great for a workforce that has to fit into a 9-to-5 pattern. And more than simply just causing sluggishness and tiredness, living to a schedule that doesn\u2019t match our chronotype can have serious implications on our mental health, particularly for night owls.<\/p>\n \u201cBasically, any kind of psychological disorder is linked to later chronotypes. We\u2019ve got personality disorders, insomnia, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, substance use disorders<\/a>, sleep apnoea, basically anything,\u201d says Lenneis.<\/p>\n \u201cPerformance as well, especially in children. We know that children perform better in schools if they have earlier chronotypes. Your performance depends at what time you\u2019re more alert \u2013 that\u2019s when you normally perform better. So in schools, for example, if you are very tired as an evening person then you just can\u2019t perform as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more about sleep:<\/strong><\/p>\n While our chronotypes do shift more towards lark than owl as we age, it is very difficult to train yourself to alter your sleep schedule.<\/p>\n \u201cIn one of my studies, I found that self-discipline was related to morning people<\/a> and that\u2019s something you can change. So if you normally go to bed at three, then maybe you could be more self-disciplined and try to change your schedule a bit. I think you could probably also work with light,\u201d says Lenneis. \u201cSo maybe you turn off the light earlier then maybe you\u2019d get tired more easily, but obviously if it\u2019s your rhythm it\u2019s going to be very difficult to change.\u201d<\/p>\n Most people who attempt to live by a schedule that doesn\u2019t match their chronotype during the week often simply end up reverting back during the weekend \u2013 a phenomenon known as social jetlag. So maybe the easy answer is to give everyone more freedom to choose their working hours.<\/p>\n \u201cI think flexible working hours would help. Definitely. Because it\u2019s all about like your biological rhythm that\u2019s not aligned with your social clock. The extreme example would be in people who work shifts because their social and biological clocks do not match at all,\u201d says Lenneis.<\/p>\n \u201cBasically, if your biological clocks and your social clocks do not match, then you experience some sort of social jetlag. So it\u2019s like a mild but chronic form of jetlag. And yeah, so it basically works that if you are a late person, you go to bed at three and you still need to wake up early the next day, then you just do not get enough sleep. You accumulate sleep debt and then you need to compensate for it on weekends.\u201d<\/p>\n Anita is a researcher based at at The University of Warwick\u2019s Department of Psychology. She\u00a0<\/span>currently studies chronotypes.<\/span><\/p>\n Read more about sleep:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section><\/body><\/html>\n By Jason Goodyer Published: Thursday, 03 February 2022 at 12:00 am If you work a 9-to-5 job and often find yourself struggling to get out of bed in the morning, or starting to flag in the late afternoon, the person to blame is Henry Ford. The founder of the Ford Motor Company started the practice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":5807,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"6"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/02\/why-night-owls-shouldnt-have-to-start-work-at-9am.jpg",1200,823,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/02\/why-night-owls-shouldnt-have-to-start-work-at-9am-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/02\/why-night-owls-shouldnt-have-to-start-work-at-9am-300x206.jpg",300,206,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/02\/why-night-owls-shouldnt-have-to-start-work-at-9am-768x527.jpg",768,527,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/02\/why-night-owls-shouldnt-have-to-start-work-at-9am-1024x702.jpg",800,548,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/02\/why-night-owls-shouldnt-have-to-start-work-at-9am.jpg",1200,823,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/02\/why-night-owls-shouldnt-have-to-start-work-at-9am.jpg",1200,823,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Jason Goodyer Published: Thursday, 03 February 2022 at 12:00 am If you work a 9-to-5 job and often find yourself struggling to get out of bed in the morning, or starting to flag in the late afternoon, the person to blame is Henry Ford. The founder of the Ford Motor Company started the practice…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/5806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}About our expert, Dr Anita Lenneis<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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